Michaela Coel: ‘I dealt with my unhappiness by hitting people.’
Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Motormouth Tracey Gordon is a brilliant comic creation. Brought up by a hellfire-and-damnation mother (“My dear, your vagina is holy. I command you to leave your nether regions be”), the 24-year-old is desperate to lose her virginity ( “We will wait till we die if it brings you glory,” her Pentecostal Christian fiance says in his prayers), and best friends with the most worldly girl on the estate (“Just sit on his face”). Innocent, filthy, funny, oafish, she is, you might assume, an exaggerated version of her creator, Michaela Coel. She isn’t. Tracey – played by Coel in the new E4 series Chewing Gum – is very much a censored version of the real thing.

We meet at a cafe that doubles as a church in east London’s Brick Lane, close to the estate where Coel grew up. In her mustard halter-neck, shorts and platforms, she looks younger than her 27 years. Yet when she talks about her past, it often feels as if she’s already lived many lives. There’s the girl who, like Tracey, grew up with her mother and older sister (her Ghanaian parents split up before she was born). Young Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson (she changed her surname to Coel when she was told that would never catch on) was the only black pupil in her year at primary school in Tower Hamlets, an isolated girl who bullied others. “I was very unhappy at one point and dealt with my unhappiness by hitting people.”

There is secondary school Michaela, at a tough comprehensive, finally feeling she belonged with her group of black girls, laughing till she cried at the chatter and jokes. There’s the young woman who went to university twice and quit twice (the first time after three weeks, the second after studying English for a year and getting a 2:1, despite attending only one lecture). And there’s the driven Michaela who went to drama school and emerged as a poet, singer and actor (she has appeared in Channel 4’s Top Boy, and at the National in Medea).

Danielle Walters as Candice and Michaela Coel as Tracey in Chewing Gum. Photograph: Dave King

And perhaps most significantly, there is Michaela the evangelising Christian. Coel was 18 when she found God. A friend took her to dance classes. When Coel discovered they were church-run, she kept shtum. “I wouldn’t say that I wasn’t Christian because I wanted to dance, so I just pretended.” Is she a good liar? “If you don’t know me very well, I am a good liar. If you know me very well, you’d definitely know I’m a shit liar.”

When a friend took Coel to her church, a girl asked her name. “She said, ‘God is saying to you you haven’t got to know Him for yourself.’ And I was like OK, thanks, bye.” But the words resonated and she went back. “They did an altar call where they say, ‘If you know Jesus is your lord and saviour, put your hand up.’ And I shot my hand up! I ran to the front and broke down in tears. Proper breakdown! From that day on, I became a Christian. I was a very extreme Christian.”

She tucks into her courgette cake, pulls a face, opts for my chocolate cake and smiles approvingly. “It’s a bit like hypnotism,” she says, chewing. “If you’re in an open place, you’ll be hypnotised. And if you’re not, you won’t. I was at a place where I didn’t know what to do with my life. It was either end up pregnant in a council flat or ... I didn’t have another option.”

Michaela Coel, centre, and the rest of the cast of Chewing Gum. Photograph: Dave King

Coel was hardly a woman of the world, but she was not a virgin (“Hi Dean! Hope you’re well”). She finished with Dean and became celibate. She also became preachy and intolerant. She soon lost the secondary-school friends, which still causes her pain. The thing is, she says, she was so happy that she wanted others to experience her joy. She admits she didn’t go about it the best way. “I would be shouting at them in their houses, ‘What are you doing? Jesus loves you! You are not happy with your life! Why won’t you listen?’” And she really does shout.

What did her family think about her conversion? “Mum thought I was in a cult, and my sister was scared. Everyone was very worried.” At the time, neither her mother nor her sister were religious; now they belong to the same Pentecostal church, even though Coel has since left. Her conversion led to a creative flowering. She wanted to put her feelings about Jesus into words so she became a performance poet. In Sorry I’m a Christian, she tells prospective admirers why she’s off limits because she’s saving herself for Jesus.

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It’s interesting, I say, that so much of her writing is a battle between godliness and desire. “Yeah!” she shouts. “Isn’t that life, though?” Does she like the person she became? “No, I don’t like that person.” How would she describe herself? “Militant, judgmental.” Coel performed her poetry at Hackney Empire, where she was spotted by the playwright and director Ché Walker, who invited her to the masterclasses he did at Rada for free. From there, she went to Guildhall drama school and that was the end of religion. “I became best friends with gay people and I was like, ‘Oooh, I don’t feel compelled to tell you that you need Jesus because I don’t think you do.’”

In many ways, this is the world that her six-part comedy series portrays. It started life as a one-woman play, performed at Hackney Wick’s Yard Theatre then transferred to the National, Manchester’s Royal Exchange and Holland’s National Theatre. In Chewing Gum Dreams, Coel played 14-year-old Tracey and all the other characters on her London estate. The title referred to aspirations left splattered like discarded gum. Her influences range from Keats, Nina Simone and Tina Fey to Courttia Newland. “He wrote novels about black working-class London at the time So Solid Crew were popping up, and it seemed to me the only literature that was echoing the life I was living.”

Chewing Gum is beautifully written, its dialogue outlandish and thoroughly believable. This is modern, working-class city life: a world where skin colour is invisible for some (Tracey’s best friend is mixed race and her sisters are white, but it is never discussed) and omni-present for others; a world of absent fathers and dominant mothers. It’s also a refreshingly optimistic world, in which people believe they can achieve anything, whatever their background. Again, this is shaped by Coel’s experience. Her mother worked as a cleaner for many years before doing a degree, and then a masters in psychology. She now works as a mental health liaison officer. “She’s pretty awesome,” Coel says.

Michaela Coel: ‘I am disciplined to the point of danger.’ Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

The one thing all Chewing Gum’s characters have in common is that they are relatively poor. Over the years, says Coel, she has come to realise that what she assumed were race issues are actually more about class. “Inequality starts in the womb,” she says, telling me about a report that documents how the stress and hardship a pregnant mother experiences affects the child’s life.

Although it is five years since she left the church, Coel says she has lost none of her capacity for extreme behaviour. These days, it just finds expression in her work and personal politics. When she was commissioned to write Chewing Gum, she found herself a 24-hour cafe and made it her home. “I would sit there for two days straight, working to my deadlines. The staff would come in, do their shift, leave, sleep, come back in, and I’d still be there. That’s not sensible. It’s very disciplined, but it’s also completely crazy. That is me. Disciplined to the point of danger.” She thinks about it. “I am really weird.”

I tell her I like the fact nothing is taboo in Chewing Gum – when Tracey’s having her period, we sure get to know about it. Absolutely, she says. “We fart, we shit, we bleed, I’m always like ...” She trails off, wondering whether she should tell the following story, but of course she does (the only concession being that she whispers it). “I was on my period and my ex-boyfriend wanted to have sex, and I was like, ‘I’ve got a tampon in.’ He was like, ‘Take it out.’ And I was like, ‘If you want to have sex, you’ve got to take it out yourself.’ And he did. Women have got to do that.” She acts out the whole scene for me: “‘This is the vagina. You either want to know it or you don’t. This is the vagina!’” By now she’s shouting passionately.

She apologises and bursts out laughing. But this is the great thing about Coel. She’s writing about the stuff that many of us think but won’t articulate. As we leave, she mentions that after she walked out on the Pentecostalists, she used to pray in this cafe, then she stopped attending church altogether. She still thinks her Christianity has been a force for good in her life. “It gave me confidence and I haven’t lost that yet.” She pauses. “I still actually talk to God.” So you’ve not entirely lost your faith? “No, I’m just uncertain. I don’t know what ‘It’ is. But I do say thank you for everything.”